Ch. 10: Riruka vs. Komamura

-OR-

GRINE MY DETRACTILANCE 5

A/N: Playing off the "COULD UKITAKE BE BAD OMG" transparent bullshit reveal during the Fullbullshit arc (which totally warranted its own full page panel of an evil looking Ukitake you guys) I have decided to slowly transform Ukitake into a villain, only for him to get his own Byakuya-esque transparent bullshit excuse at the very end.

Surprisingly, the indigent Rukongai dwellers that had come to people the stands once more cheered as Komamura and Riruka strode proudly into the arena to face each other in honorable combat.

"What's with them?" Ichigo wondered aloud.

Renji picked his ear. "You wouldn't understand. How often do you think people in slums are handed free plushies?"

"You guys keep letting Hollows wreak havoc in Karakura and I guess I'll find out sooner or later. I mean, that's a lot of Hollows running around to have caused so many Fullbringers to be born."

Rukia punched him on the arm. "Sorry we can't all be awesome geniuses like you, Ichigo."

"You're just happy with any socioeconomic development that nets you a sudden windfall of stuffed bunnies."

Rukia squeezed her Chappy and her eyes darted from Ichigo to Chappy to Ichigo. "Shut up."

"Hey, Renji, is your fight going to be against one of the plushies? Only way it'd be fair," Ichigo teased.

"What she said," Renji shot back. "Also, don't forget that it's because of your stupid crazy reiatsu in the first place that your town is plagued by an avalanche of Hollows."

"Is it, though? All those Fullbringers were born before I started leaking any spirit energy."

"…That's a good point," Rukia realized. Once again she gazed down on Chappy, her enormous eyes beaming in concentration. An answer:

"Tsukishima did it."

"Oh yeaah," Ichigo agreed. "Glad that fucker's dead. He's a soul now, isn't he? I should have ol' soul destroyer Ishida pay him a visit." A murderous glee at the thought of Tsukishima annihilated crept over his eyes.

"No, just let him degenerate into a Hollow, and then kill him, that way he goes to hell after having been a Hollow a while. That's even worse," said Rukia, channeling her inner sadist.

"You two are stone cold, yeesh," said Renji.

"We can give you pointers," said Rukia.

In the battlefield, Kon's soul pill had ejected as an automatic self-defense mechanism against Riruka's ministrations, and since Aizen was still locked up, there was no official emcee to declare the match begun. As Rukia and Renji argued over which of them had the better track record when it came to fights, Ichigo overheard Yamamoto beside him, wheedling Ukitake into assuming the role of emcee—and Hitsugaya mumbling bitter somethings through chittering teeth as Unohana stripped away the binding spell the new improved Momo placed on him like one would strip off chest hair.

Farther away, another interesting conversation was taking place.

"Why am I alive, you ask?"

Giriko supposed he shouldn't be taken aback by the question; it was not everyone who resumed the everyday trials of life after getting clean bifurcated. "It all began when my mother narrowly escaped a Hollow while pregnant with me…"

"Dude." Ikkaku stretched his palm out to Giriko's face. "That's all I need to hear about the nasty particulars of the human world. I just want to know how you survived a slash from the one and only Captain Kenpachi."

Giriko flashed his chompers at the hand and grinned wide, as though he were preparing to rip it off Ikkaku's wrist. "Let's just say the turn of phrase time heals ALL wounds is no lie."

He threw off his eyepatch and revealed his right peeper with a fabulous flourish.

"…It's a normal eye," responded Ikkaku quizzically. "But if you're looking for a new eyepatch, my captain can provide."

Meanwhile, this match's combatants sized each other up in the arena.

"At first I thought you must just be another shinigami scum, but now I think you and I might just get along," said Riruka.

Komamura looked down at her with a mixture of indignation and amusement.

"I am NOT going to enter your plushy collection."

Riruka put the donut she was going to use as bait back into her bag and put her hands on her hips. "That's not what I meant, you—"

Komamura's ears pivoted away so he didn't have to listen to the impending tsuntsun tirade. Riruka took notice and checked herself, forcing a smile.

"Listen, I just want to say how much I appreciate you."

"What?" Komamura crossed his arms, skeptical.

"With your… condition… you must understand what a horrid lie the LAW OF THE JUNGLE is!"

"Excuse me?"

Riruka began to rattle off the choked philosophy Ginjou had fed her, reciting it almost robotically. "People with ambition buy into the notion of the 'survival of the fittest,' but it's all just an illusion so that the weak majority persecutes the strong minority! It's the minority that has ruled since ancient times!"

"My patience wears thin already. What are you getting at, human?"

"I'm saying that as the minority, you should throw the shackles of your oppressors off and join me on my mission to overturn the social order!"

"You would that I turn blade against my comrades!? Insolence!"

Komamura's snout flared, incensed. His hand gripped his katana, but of course he shook his anger away. It was not his duty to harm humans, however ignorant.

Charlotte naturally seized upon this potential for drama. "Ohh, a moral dilemma! Will Captain Komamura's disgust with this human get the better of him?"

Ukitake, the new emcee, shot him a quite sympathetic look. Even I'd have trouble keeping calm around this girl. But still he rang the bell and began the match, eager to bring this whole tournament to a tidy end as soon as possible.

START THE FIGHTING!

Riruka had already prepared her Fullbring, the small cartoon heart snapping from her finger to her target. Sooner than Komamura could react, he found himself shrunk down and warped into Riruka's bag.

Komamura poked at his purchase in the darkness. A sugary coating of some kind. He sniffed and grasped this pillowy confection. "…Well, this is new."

Riruka flashed Ukitake a thumbs up. "So… I won, right?"

"Oh, I wouldn't count him out just yet."

Her thumb turned into an accusatory finger. "Tch! I should have known you, of all people, would rig the match! After what you did to Ginjou…"

She struck a nerve. "What, you mean restraining him for his safety and the safety of others? Yeah, what a heinous crime. It's not like he ended up going crazy or anything," he said, rolling his eyes.

"You slapped his neck on the chopping block since the very beginning! Of course he was going to rebel!"

Ukitake's measured manner was slipping away—one too many ethics committee meetings had chipped away at his composure. "Look, I'm not even going to pretend I give the ghost of a shit anymore about your poow wittle Ginjou Winjou's bad feels. I hack up half my lungs everyday, and no it doesn't get any easier. But do you see me fucking with Ichigo and his friends for shits and giggles? No, because I don't have a fuck factory's worth of screws loose. Besides, it's not we who betrayed his trust, it's he who betrayed ours. He's the one who gambled and lost."

"But… that doesn't make any sense," said Ichigo in the stands.

"I'm pretty sure this is a case where both sides are equally stupid," said Rukia. "Glad you knocked out Soul Society's million years of rigidity, Ichigo!"

"Not sure I really should have, now that it's turned over Ukitake-san's dark underbelly," he replied uneasily.

Rukia flashbacked, overtaken by the vivid memory of Kaien's Hollow possession. Ukitake had told her to stand back so as not to wound Kaien's pride. She blinked rapidly and her heart skipped a beat. Could it be…?

No… No… All she felt from her captain was warmth and compassion. It was nothing like Ichimaru's serpentine aura of fear.

"Are you okay?" asked Renji.

She punched him on the shoulder. "I thought I told you, fool. You no longer need to worry about me."

But she felt as though a certain blind spot had been jostled free in her mind.

Had she simply become too mistrustful? The selfsame creepy crawlies Gin had shot her were starting to course up her spine. Even Renji had come after her, once, she reasoned. Maybe Ichigo really was the only unchanging anchor, the only person she could rely on. Scrunching her hakama in her fingers, she stared intently at her captain, who stood there like an equalizing wall, parrying Riruka's heated blather with progressively more foulmouthed sarcasm.

Finally, Komamura had had his fill of delicious Japanese donuts (seriously reader, patronize your nearest Mr. Donut venue at the first opportunity), and unleashed a yelp of "Bankai!" a bit more burpily than he would have liked.

The giant samurai rose from the dust, a titan of sun and clay. Typically, it would dwarf buildings. However, since Komamura himself remained miniscule, his bankai had also been scaled down. Now, it only reached Riruka's height.

Riruka kicked back twenty paces in surprise, and activated the full extent of her Fullbring, donning the clad-type armor Ginjou had given her and all the members of Xcution when he stole Ichigo's own super sentai Fullbring. She currently wielded the power to hide herself inside any person or object. If she could successfully override Komamura's control of Tengen Myouou, this match was hers, and she'd be free to continue her cuteness crusade.

Sure enough, it worked; she pressed on Tengen's chest plate with her Fullbring's pincer claw and entered it through the pried hatch. Piloting it like a Gundam, she slashed through her own bag and forcibly ejected Komamura, who snapped back to regular size.

"You can't hurt me now!" she crowed. "Any damage your bankai takes, you receive in kind!"

Komamura crossed his arms, and remained silent.

"How does it feel, to be looked down upon? You think you're so great, but you're just a pet they've seen fit to dress up and parade around! You're just yet another of Soul Society's tools to be used and thrown aside! And you bought into it totally, how pathetic!"

"Ugh, I hate teenage girls," said Ukitake, dabbing at his brow. "Honeybunch, he's fifty times your age, I think he knows what's what by now."

Riruka brought Tengen's scimitar to its neck, threatening to kill Komamura in so doing. "All right, let's see you risk your own neck to save him then, if you care so much about him! Let's see you really sweat!"

Ukitake sat his ass down on the dust, defiant.

"You see!? Not a glimmer of compassion!"

Komamura spoke at last. "Ukitake-san. I hear you often have trouble restraining your 3rd Seats."

"They can be a fucking hassle, man," he smiled guiltily.

"Forgive me my presumptuousness, but if I may be allowed to give you a piece of advice; don't humor them. If there's anything Yamamoto-soutaichou has taught me, it is to stamp down such meaningless babble with an iron fist."

"You're still going to pretend everything's cool!?" she harped. "Maybe you've been alive too long, just like the rest of you shinigami! You're not a dog, you're a dinosaur! Or maybe, maybe it's not your age, it's that they kicked obedience into you! They looked down on you like a WHELP!"

After a fashion, Komamura's fierce amber eyes deigned to look her way. "I wouldn't waste my breath, if I were you. You're not going to get a response out of me. Any effort spent educating you is effort wasted."

"Ohh? And why's that, tough guy!?"

"When's the last time you saw a fox mentor a gnat?"

A fox is clever, and above all fleet.

Riruka saw the devious fang and hiccupped in terror. "N-no… NOOOO!"

Komamura simply sealed his sword again. Riruka was trapped as a reflection in his blade.

He looked down at her, eyes boring; she was his new tool.

Well, he had said she wasn't going to get a response out of him, but this chance for a one-liner was too good to pass up.

"You don't know a thing about me. Bitch."

"He's going to need fifty more lifetimes of practice for his one-liners," Ichigo appraised.

WINNER: Komamura

_*_*_

KOMAMURA'S TOUCHING BACKSTORY

In death, he was a fox person.

In life, he was also a fox person.

"Oh, how I wish I weren't a fox person!" Komamura wailed to the sky, even as the feudal Japanese pitchforks pierced his fluffy winter coat.

The sky pissed on his dreams.

_*_*_

"What, that's it?" said Editor. "That's not even a page of backstory. Half of the page is a single panel of Riruka looking down, as if that means something."

Kubo sighed, as though he were dealing with a simpleton incapable of grasping his intricate tiered fortress of secrets. "The last time I wrote flashbacks, they were all two pages long for four people back to back. My brain still hasn't recovered from the sheer emotional toll of that chapter."

"Your brain is a 4th level mystery, Kubo."

Kubo lit up. What an immense compliment, what a refreshing pat on the back!

"That's the first nice thing you've said to me all week, Editor."

Had… had he forged a friend?

He would try to append a –chan to Editor's next time.

NEXT MATCH: Ukitake vs. Yachiru